“Maybe it wasn’t all the drink and it was the woman?”
He twisted his body and stretched out his legs, leaning back on the headboard. “I like the way you think.”
“Now that we’ve got my jealous rampage out of the way. How the hell did she get ahold of a copy of my manuscript? I know my editor wouldn’t give her that quote. Not without running it by me first.”
“Would Kara?” Jag hated asking that question. Kara had been a good friend to Callie, especially when Jag had been a jerk. But Kara had her own set of issues, and there were times Jag questioned Kara’s motives. At one point, he wondered if Kara wasn’t in love with Callie, but he knew now that he’d been jealous for no reason. “And I don’t mean on purpose. I’m just asking if she’d give someone a quote without thinking.”
“No. Not without asking me first.” Callie dropped her head on his shoulder. “I did have a copy of the manuscript on the table when she got there. It’s possible she saw something before I put it away.”
“For now, we’ll go with that, but I want you to change your passwords and have a conversation with everyone who was given a copy.”
“I can do that,” she said. “But what about Bailey?”
“I’ll handle her.”
Callie poked the center of his chest. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
He grabbed her wrist and kissed the center of her palm. “Bailey was more embarrassed about my lack of performance than I was. As a matter of fact, she took it so personally that she’s lied about it ever since.”
“That’s kind of pathetic on her part,” Callie said. “But do you mind if we stop talking about her now? I’m actually really curious on what you thought about the interview with Jackie.”
He raised his arm, wrapping it around her body and pulling her close.
So much for waiting for her to make the first move.
Well, she did touch him first.
“You were amazing.”
“I was so pissed when she went off-script and asked about you and me. She promised she wouldn’t. She swore she’d keep it strictly to the book,” Callie said.
Jag had been just as shocked. He’d thought Jackie was more of a classy reporter than that, but since there was no news to report when it came to the Trinket Killer, why not go for the sensationalism and dirt. “She did handle the book stuff really well and got to the heart of the investigation. I particularly liked how she brought up Armstrong and how she’s still such a big question mark in the case. We still have no idea why she planted DNA or mixed it all up. I know the department has been looking closely at all her work, and the Trinket Killer seems to be the only case she fucked up.”
“Have you read her autopsy?” Callie asked.
“I have, and no, I’m not going to show it to you.”
She glanced up at him. “Do you believe she killed herself?”
“The evidence is pretty damning for that conclusion.” He pressed his fingers against Callie’s lips when she opened her mouth. “I’ve thought about the idea the killer could have murdered her and set it up to look like a suicide. But I can’t answer the question as to why Armstrong would help the Trinket Killer.”
“Did you ever think that maybe Armstrong was the killer?” Callie asked.
“That’s an interesting theory, and now that we think the killer could have been a woman, it’s one that I’ve asked the cold case detective to look into, but my gut instinct says no.” That said, he knew there was a connection between Armstrong and the killer.
He just didn’t know what it was.
He reached for his iPad and pulled up his file on the subject. “I’ve done a lot of thinking over the last year about Armstrong. When we believed without a doubt that the Trinket Killer was a man, I wondered if Armstrong could have been his lover, and that’s possible. But she’s also bi-sexual.”
“So she could have had an affair with the killer regardless of gender,” Callie said. “But she didn’t start doing it until the sixth victim.”
“And that’s what is fascinating to me.” He handed her his iPad. “I just made this note today, but that’s when the color of the trinket changed from gold to silver.”
Callie sat up taller and scrolled through his detailed notes he’d been making for the last year. Every little thing he’d ever thought of. It was more of a flow of consciousness than anything else, so some things he’d already proven incorrect. But sometimes, going back and examining the way his mind pieced together the information as it was presented gave him insight.
Or it just made him crazy.
“And you really think the killings started before Renee?”
“If the three ravens are a precursor of what is to come, then there had to be a single trinket to start.”
She handed him his iPad. “But the one you showed me didn’t have six murders.”
“Because they caught who they thought was the killer. I suspect if Adam hadn’t been released, our killer would have stopped. We gave him or her permission to finish his cycle when Adam was proven not to be the murderer and was released.”
“And Armstrong helped proved that right before she committed suicide,” Callie said.
He pressed his lips against her forehead, sliding down onto the mattress. In the last couple of days, they’d uncovered more information than he’d been able to in an entire year. “We make a good team,” he whispered. “That is when I’m not being an arrogant detective who thinks he knows everything and—”
“I’m not out for ratings, doing whatever it takes, including snooping in police files.”
“We both made a lot of mistakes. We’ve both changed. Why aren’t you willing to give us another chance?”
“There are a lot of reasons. One of which is I’m not willing to live in Seattle. Hell, I won’t be
